Two enthusiastic realtors offer different spins on the same dilapidated, but lovely rural property as their clients search for the perfect home. While a fast-talking human realtor in red coat and high heels extols the virtues of Breezy Lake Lodge, Dry River Ranch, Rocky Point Lighthouse, Mountain Peek Perch, Briarwood Cabin and Prairie Place Park to a human family, a raccoon realtor in trench coat and bowtie urges families of finches, ducks, cats, rabbits, foxes and deer to settle down on Old Mill Farm. The human realtor strikes out with every inappropriate property she shows, but raccoon’s clients find cozy Old Mill Farm the “perfect” venue to raise their babies. And when the human realtor finally takes her prospective buyers to see homey Old Mill Farm, they, too, pronounce it “perfect.” This lighthearted real-estate review rendered in verse text and amusing watercolor and digital-media illustrations eventually unites human and animal buyers in the pastoral perfection of Old Mill Farm. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: May 21, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-618-42846-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2007
The wriggly narrator of Diary of a Worm (2003) puts in occasional appearances, but it’s his arachnid buddy who takes center stage here, with terse, tongue-in-cheek comments on his likes (his close friend Fly, Charlotte’s Web), his dislikes (vacuums, people with big feet), nervous encounters with a huge Daddy Longlegs, his extended family—which includes a Grandpa more than willing to share hard-won wisdom (The secret to a long, happy life: “Never fall asleep in a shoe.”)—and mishaps both at spider school and on the human playground. Bliss endows his garden-dwellers with faces and the odd hat or other accessory, and creates cozy webs or burrows colorfully decorated with corks, scraps, plastic toys and other human detritus. Spider closes with the notion that we could all get along, “just like me and Fly,” if we but got to know one another. Once again, brilliantly hilarious. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-000153-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Joanna Cotler/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2005
Hee haw.
The print version of a knee-slapping cumulative ditty.
In the song, Smith meets a donkey on the road. It is three-legged, and so a “wonky donkey” that, on further examination, has but one eye and so is a “winky wonky donkey” with a taste for country music and therefore a “honky-tonky winky wonky donkey,” and so on to a final characterization as a “spunky hanky-panky cranky stinky-dinky lanky honky-tonky winky wonky donkey.” A free musical recording (of this version, anyway—the author’s website hints at an adults-only version of the song) is available from the publisher and elsewhere online. Even though the book has no included soundtrack, the sly, high-spirited, eye patch–sporting donkey that grins, winks, farts, and clumps its way through the song on a prosthetic metal hoof in Cowley’s informal watercolors supplies comical visual flourishes for the silly wordplay. Look for ready guffaws from young audiences, whether read or sung, though those attuned to disability stereotypes may find themselves wincing instead or as well.
Hee haw. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: May 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-545-26124-1
Page Count: 26
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2018
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